5 State authorities, municipal forces and military intervention in the policing of strikes in Austria- Hungary, 1890–1914 * Claire Morelon In an interpellation in the Austrian Parliament in 1908, a Social Democratic dep- uty denounced the actions of the police and gendarmerie in Troppau/Opava dur- ing a masons’ strike: The attitude of district officer Klinger and the municipality of Troppau and its police towards the strikers is absolutely improper and unlawful. Instead of acting impartially, they place themselves at the service of the master builders. This of course damages the trust of the workers and, in general, their percep- tion of justice, and undermines the authority of the officials.1 In early twentieth-century Austria-Hungary, in an age of growing democratisa- tion, the expectation that authorities would be impartial in labour disputes had far-reaching consequences. The need to maintain public order, a cornerstone of state duties, increasingly faced competing challenges. From the 1890s to 1914, the number of strikes (and of strikers involved) significantly rose in Austria-Hungary in a context of growing industrialisation.2 Consequently, employers were putting more pressure on state authorities to intervene in the management of the strikes. At the same time, the push for democratisation (culminating in 1907 with the intro- duction of universal and equal suffrage in parliamentary elections) and increased calls for constitutional rights to be respected meant that workers’ representatives demanded greater accountability from the Austrian government. This chapter examines how the Austrian state managed these competing demands in the two decades before the First World War. It analyses the regulation of public order in the Habsburg monarchy by examining the interaction between the different authorities at the local level and the centres of power. The interplay between the various levels highlights the discrepancy between central decisions and local practices, as well as the regional differences across the vast Empire. We limit our focus here to the Austrian half of the Empire as the organisation of the police and gendarmerie forces in the Hungarian half was wholly separate and, hence, dissimilar.3 The much narrower franchise and the systematic persecution of the workers’ movement also created a very different context where trade unions were barely tolerated and harsh repression of strikes was consistent with the law.4 In Cisleithania, however, the expanding public sphere and constitutional liberties 80 Claire Morelon made severe measures more fraught. Through the topic of strikes, this chapter explores the strength of the rule of law on the ground.5 One of the important com- ponents of this discussion was the role of the army in the repression of strikes, both in quelling unrest and in replacing strikers as a workforce. The increased militarisation of the monarchy in the lead-up to the war also had a strong influ- ence on the debate.6 Detailed examination of administrative correspondence and public arguments reveals the contradictions faced by the Austrian state between demands of impartiality, lack of resources and more repressive attitudes. The examples from the various corners of Cisleithania discussed here are drawn from the archives of the Interior Ministry and Defence Ministry in Vienna as well as local archives to provide a more vivid picture of strike policing across the Empire. Strikes and public order As the number of strikes grew towards the end of the nineteenth century, they increasingly became a matter of public order for local authorities in the Habsburg monarchy. The police apparatus in the Austrian half of the Empire had developed progressively since the 1850s. The security forces directly answerable to regional and district authorities were the gendarmerie and the state police. District officers in rural areas and smaller towns relied on gendarmerie units, while in larger cit- ies (such as Vienna, Graz, Prague, Brnn/Brno, Lemberg/Lww/L’viv, Cracow and Trieste/Trst), police headquarters (Polizeidirektionen ) supervised public safety. 7 The number of state police centres in Cisleithania rapidly increased in the last decades before 1914: new police commissariats (Polizeikommisariate) were established in Przemyśl (1892), Mährisch-Ostrau/Moravská Ostrava (1894), Pola/Pula (1903), Rovigno/Rovinj (1910) and Borysław/Boryslav (1913), and two new police headquarters were established in Czernowitz/Cernăuți/Chernitsvi (1905) and Laibach/Ljubljana (1913). Municipalities all over Cisleithania also employed and funded their own police forces. These municipal forces were fre- quently involved in the policing of strikes. In contrast to the state police, local police forces were under the authority of the mayor and only assisted the state authorities.8 State intervention in the policing of strikes was viewed through the prism of the state’s duty to maintain public peace. Local state authorities (district officers and police chiefs) therefore tended to monitor the development of strikes and call for reinforcements when necessary, but only intervened if the strike threatened to turn violent. The mobilisation of forces was gradual: if locally stationed forces were deemed insufficient, district officers called for gendarmerie reinforcements, even if they were not immediately deployed. Some regions, however, suffered from a greater shortage of gendarmerie troops. The district officer in Pisino/Pazin (Istria), for example, explained in 1909 that there were no gendarmes available in the district to be sent to the coal mines in Carpano/Krapan for an upcoming strike, as they were all mobilised elsewhere to prevent sheep thefts.9 The frequent “concentration” of gendarmes, moving from one district to another or even from one crownland to another, to maintain order during strikes was also expensive Policing of strikes in Austria-Hungary 81 as the gendarmes needed to be transported and housed. For example, during the second half of 1911 alone, 1,700 gendarmes intervened in strikes in 64 locations in Bohemia. The Defence Ministry (which controlled the gendarmerie) charged the expenses incurred during such operations to the Interior Ministry.10 Costs and available manpower were thus part of the considerations taken by local authorities when making decisions on intervention. Finally, in cases of larger demonstrations or fear of violence, authorities called for the support of army units. Use of the mil- itary was officially intended to be the “utmost and last resource to maintain and restore public peace”.11 But in practice district officers sometimes asked for army support if there were insufficient numbers of gendarmes available in the area.12 During strikes, one of the main causes of violence – or disturbance to pub- lic order in the official jargon – was the interaction between striking workers and “strikebreakers”, either workers from the factory who continued to work or imported workers brought in by the employers to replace the strikers. An example of these confrontations can be seen during a strike in 1906 at the large wagon factory in Nesselsdorf/Kopřivnice (Moravia), which employed several thousand workers. When 30 workers decided to resume work, the strikers attempted to dis- suade them from going back with insults and shaming. The district officer imme- diately took preventive measures and commented: “The entire location in its full extent had to be occupied by gendarmes to protect the few willing workers”.13 During the following weeks, gendarmes accompanied the strikebreakers to and from the factory. As the strike continued and the number of strikebreakers grew, several small incidents occurred. On one day, the strikers blocked the road to a nearby town to stop 12 new workers on their way home. When these workers took the train instead, a crowd of 500 people came to meet them at the station, swing- ing sticks and shouting insults and threats. Other incidents included rotten eggs or excrement being thrown at individuals in the street or outside the factory. Some windows of private homes were broken.14 The shaming rituals aimed at coerc- ing non-striking workers into compliance with the strike and the frequent verbal threats and insults sometimes turned physical.15 The tactics against strikebreak- ers recalled traditional forms of popular justice, such as charivaris, and can be traced back to the rural background of most of the workers at the time.16 From the employers’ point of view, police protection of “willing workers” at all times was essential to maintain their activity: the intention was to reassure the workers and encourage them to come back. In some cases, employers even armed the “willing” workers with revolvers to ensure they could protect themselves. During a lockout in Vienna in 1911, the Arbeiter-Zeitung mocked the “little performance” of the factory owner leading his new, armed workers outside the factory.17 Employers regularly complained of the insufficient protection offered by the police forces to willing workers. In a letter to his district officer, a silk factory owner in Mährisch Trbau/Moravská Třebová (Moravia) outlined his expectations: [we ask for] the authorities’ protection against the threatening attacks of strik- ing workers, which is due to us as citizens and taxpaying industrialists. We believe we are entitled to the authorities’ support in restarting the factory’s 82 Claire Morelon activity with work-willing elements. [This support should consist in] preven- tive measures to avoid trouble,